“Compromising evidence” against compromise – Newspaper Kommersant No. 176 (7377) of 09/23/2022

In France, a new film by Jerome Salle “Compromising evidence” was released, based on the true story of a Frenchman who worked in Russia, sentenced to prison in Irkutsk, but escaped despite all the efforts of the “authorities”. A new film of the new cold war was watched by a Kommersant correspondent in France Alexey Tarkhanov.

For his thriller, director Jérôme Salle was inspired by the true story of Yoann Barbero, the former head of the Alliance Française organization in Irkutsk, which he described in the book In the Prisons of Siberia. On August 20, 2020, Kommersant talked about how a Frenchman who was arrested in a probably fabricated case of pedophilia escaped from arrest, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison, but managed to return to France by deceiving the FSB.

One can argue for a long time which court is more impartial: the Irkutsk one, which sentenced the Frenchman, the European one, which acquitted him, or God’s, which will distribute it to everyone. But the filmmakers are on the side of the hero in advance. Mathieu Roussel (played by Gilles Lelouch) works in conditional Irkutsk, brings French culture to the masses, tries to be friends with the bullish fathers of the city. He loves Russia, his daughter and his wife, who in return loves neither Russia nor her husband.

Everything is falling apart. The wife announces her departure, the ballet, in which two dancers embrace and, a terrible thing, kiss, provokes the anger and disgust of an authoritative patron. Calling a Frenchman out to hunt before killing a wounded elk in front of him, the city boss explains how much Russians despise cowardly Europe, pathetic France and rotten liberal values.

The next morning, special forces break into Mathieu’s house. With a bag on his head, with kicks and pummeling, he is taken to prison, where fellow prisoners begin to judge the “pedophile” according to prison laws. We meet a lawyer who speaks caricaturely in French, no matter how his hero asks to return to his native speech. “I like to speak French,” smiles the rogue lawyer Borodin. He is played by Alexei Gorbunov, remembered by us and the French for the role of the cunning and ruthless KGB officer Karlov in the spy series Bureau of Legends.

For the first time in my memory, in an article about a new film, I am not bound by spoilers. First, because the story is known, it has a relatively happy ending. And secondly, the film will not be shown in Russia for the foreseeable future, because the image of a country seething with violence is unlikely to appeal to our distributors. And in vain. Of course, the cell staff of the Irkutsk prison, the investigators, guards, emissaries of the Moscow FSB look creepy. Especially the main thug Sagarin performed by Igor Zhizhikin (remember the Russian killer colonel Dovchenko in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?). But here, as in the old Soviet joke, “Let them slander.” But people, in spite of everything helping the hero, look all the more humane. This is the same lawyer whispering in your ear advice to run if you have the courage. This is a priest who did not hand over the Frenchman to the patrols. This is a tortured girl – the wife of a disabled “Chechen” (Danila Vorobyov) and the daughter-in-law of the city FSB chief – with whom Mathieu begins an affair that fits into secret text messages. The role of Lyudmila was played by the Polish actress Joanna Kulig, who managed to show a real Russian, tough, unglamorous, if not a sleepless blonde with five pistols, but ready to go as far in a hopeless case as few people would have done in her place. Excellent work, slightly repeating her role in Pavel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War”, but very appropriate in the film.

It seemed to the French audience that the Russians were brought out too ferocious. They can’t be like that. Russians cannot live so cruelly, poorly and dirty. Meanwhile, the work of the artist in the film is one of the greatest successes. There is simply no cranberry in Kompromat, perhaps because it was filmed in the former Soviet Latvia, where life in some places is not far from Irkutsk. These are exactly those houses, those rugs on the wall, those magnets on the refrigerator, those apartments that we all saw, smelled and touched.

Compared to the “wild” Russians, by the way, French diplomats are shown much less sympathetically, not ready to risk their careers for the sake of a petty cultural fry. With brilliant hostility, the ambassador (Louis-Do de Lanxen) is shown recommending Mathieu to surrender as soon as possible and sit in a Russian prison for 15 years, because it will be better for everyone. As a result, the hero flees for the second time – from the golden cage of the French embassy in Moscow, in order to escape across the border with Estonia.

In the film, by the way, there is no answer for what the hero got so much for. No one can answer this question in life. Because he was a spy? Hardly. Because President Hollande showed disdain for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and even did not transfer the paid Mistrals to Russia? But how did the echo from Paris respond in Irkutsk? Or simply because every Russian city has its own law and its own lawyers who do whatever they please with people.

In the film, Mathieu Roussel crosses Russia obliquely, pulling the nose of the secret services. At the same time, he is definitely not James Bond – an ordinary Frenchman with stubble and a tummy. His two escapes, and especially the final showdown in which he overpowers a commando killer, look exactly like in the movies. And it was immediately noted by critics. But the film is not about the chase. This is the story of how an ordinary person who dares to fight zombies defeats them on behalf of “cowardly Europe and pathetic France.” Probably, we should have written that “during the filming of the film, not a single FSB officer was injured,” and also “do not try to repeat this at home,” but it seems to be clear now and so.